MR. DRISCOLL: Jonathan, getting back to demographics in the United States, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com has two books out from, I believe, the same publisher as What to Expect When No One’s Expecting, which explore the Higher Education Bubble and the K through 12 Implosion. How does the skyrocketing cost of education impact American demographics, or perhaps, vice-versa?

MR. LAST: Well, you know, it impacts it in three ways. You know, there’s a front end and a back end, and then there’s a straight-up timeline way — chronology end. So on the back end, people who graduate from college graduate with a lot of debt. They say in surveys that that debt — you ask them and they tell you — that debt is making them hold off on getting married and making them hold off on having children.

Going forward, prospectively, you know, if you — if you were today to have a kid and think about what it would be like to put that kid in college today, that is the equivalent of buying basically a house and a half. The average cost of a house in America is 185,000 dollars. The average cost of college tuition right now is something like 212,000, or something like that.

The real cost of college since 1965, the real cost — this is accounting for inflation, has increased by 1,000 percent. You know, if this was any other sector — and Glenn makes this point — any other sector, we would be saying this is broken; this needs to be reformed. But because it’s education, we just keep pushing people into it.

So those are the front end and the back end effect. But the other effect, the chronological one, is that it just keeps pushing back the average time of family formation. So you don’t graduate until you’re twenty-two or, you know, maybe twenty-three or twenty-four. And that’s just with undergraduate. So now you don’t even begin to think about family formation and you don’t get married until, say, twenty-seven, which is, I think, about what our average age of first marriage is now. A dramatic rise since the early 1970s.

You then look at time of first birth. Most people try at least to not have that first birth until after they’re married. And that gets pushed back until you’re now your late twenty-eight, early twenty-nines. And then you run up into the wall of biology. You know, after thirty-five, it becomes harder for women to get pregnant, after thirty-nine, it becomes really, really hard for women to get pregnant.

And so you can see why, you know, somebody who wants to have, you know, two or three kids, if they’re not getting started till they’re twenty-nine or thirty, all of a sudden, that becomes, just as a logistical matter, kind of tough.

MR. DRISCOLL: Jonathan, last question, because I know you’re on the whirlwind tour today to promote the book. Do you think that Obama, or anybody in DC, for that matter, is taking the issue of America’s demographic decline seriously?

MR. LAST: Well, Obama sure isn’t. You know, in a funny way, actually Rick Santorum, he didn’t talk about this explicitly during the campaign, but he alluded to it a lot. And he sort of tied it into, sort of, you know, talking morally about capitalism and the free market and the middle class in a very populist way. I actually thought that was kind of interesting and effective. He was the only one selling that sort of thing in the Republican field.

Now, of course, I would say this because I’m a crazy person and I’m obsessed with demographics. But I actually do think that there is a really elegant and interesting way for Republicans to create a populist case for supporting middle class families centered around the idea of not hectoring people into having babies, but trying to take the policy changes that will help people have the families that they want to have.

And I think there’s a way for Republicans to do it. I think Rick Santorum was sort of edging in that direction. And I’ll be surprised if somebody in the 2016 field doesn’t decide to take a flyer with this.

35 Comments, 16 Threads

1.
Reality

Very interesting stuff; but none of it is new to me.

Unsurprisingly, not a word is mentioned about the radical demographic changes taking place in America i.e. the shifting ethnic composition of the U.S. population. And not a word is mentioned about the skyrocketing illegitimacy rate in the U.S.

Here are some shocking statistics which went completely ignored in the interview:

1)European-Americans have declined from around 89% in 1960 to 63% — and will be a minority by 2043.

2)In 1960, only 16 million Americans did not trace their ancestors to Europe. Today, the number is 116 million.

3)Out-of-wedlock births comprised 5.3% of total births in 1960, including 2.3% of white births and 23% of black births.
Today, the illegitimacy rate is 41%. Among whites, it is 29%; among Hispanics, it is 53%; among blacks, it is 72%.

And the craziest statistic of all:

4)Births to married women in the United States, 4 million in 1960, fell to 2.3 million in 2011.

We are witnessing not the coming death of a civilization, but the ongoing death of a civilization. America is clearly in the throes of it’s death.

Liberals are hilarious on this topic – any fool can see the vast changes American influence has had in uplifting the Third World, although it’s a thin veneer with little depth beyond the surface. Men on donkeys with cell phones isn’t an end game.

But for some reason, bringing the Third World here won’t downgrade America. That veneer in the Third World would have some depth if the equivalent thing happened and millions of Americans flooded those countries.

Eventually America is the one that will have a veneer, and perhaps some isolated enclaves of tech and productivity in Montana and Idaho, though I wouldn’t count on it at the rate immigrants are pouring in.

We had a “shortage” of births during the Great Depression. We have a “shortage” of births now for the same reason. Children are increasingly “expensive” today. For those with lower incomes, they have become just too “expensive” a luxury today. With the increasing costs of health care, plus the added “overhead” of Obamacare, people are retreating and trying to save all they can. The cost of Obamacare means that people will have less disaposaable income available, so consumer demand will be less. That means fewer jobs, since the deficit is already so high that adding additional trillions to it would be the height of foolishness!

Try reading the book. If you did, you would have been informed that this “shortage of births” has been going on for 40 years. That is, despite couple’s financial health they refuse to have more than 1-2 children. In recent years having one child is the norm.

Unbelievable. Science fiction writers aren’t professional demographers either and they’ve been spectacularly right on this subject. You don’t have to be a pro, merely have eyes, have traveled a bit and have the brains to make simple comparisons. If doubling the Earth’s population from 1970 to now doesn’t do it for a person then I’m not sure what threshold would. In many places in this world, people live like animals – because of overpopulation.

There is no more land, there are a lot more people. Read about family farms being divided up til nothing’s left in the Punjab. Read about coffin hotels, the explosion of shanty town building in Rio de Janeiro, (some 700) the deforestation of the northern Guatemala jungle due to expanding families. Guatemala had 7 million people in 1980 – they have more than double that now.

“…none of the countries in Central and South America below the replacement rate send us any significant amount of immigrants.” Who in their right mind would say such a thing? Does he have figures for illegals? We don’t know what it is. We know it’s a lot and that it’s rising. Your eyes will tell you that. The idea that Latin America will stop sending us their overflow is an insane fantasy. There’s a million Guatemalans in America alone.

People and traffic in Mumbai are stacked like cordwood, Sao Paolo and Mexico City are insane megalopolises, Egypt has grown to the limit it can on one river, and there is a risk of war with Sudan in the next quarter century as they manipulate the Nile River to the detriment of Egypt. Nigeria and Java are disasters waiting to happen. I don’t get this play – not at all. The worth of a human being has dropped to the point where slavery and human trafficking have made steady advances.

I see no reason to hang this on Erlich – he’s one guy. So he was hasty. So what? Million died by starvation decades before his book, in China and Russia, and millions die from starvation around the world each year. It can and has happened. Our resources are finite and we’re going to find out how much so soon enough.

The overflow is headed for the West. This has already worked to demographically and politically subvert those countries, and this is only the beginning. The politically correct floodgates have only been open for a relatively few years.

One day in America, when we have a billion people, people are going to look back on the racist and conformist ’50s liberals love to lie about and shed tears at the passing of a golden age of peace. People will shed tears because in the mid-’60s, that’s when it all changed and we became morons. Our great-great grandchildren will spit on our graves for what we’ve wrought. There’s not a single doubt in my mind about it. People old enough to see what’s gone are chuckling already at what fools we’ve become.

First of all, who said anything about capitalism or Limbaugh? And the unindustrialized world practices more laissez-faire capitalism then we do. Limbaugh doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. He’s spent his entire adult life in the constrictions of a radio studio.

Secondly, exceptions aren’t rules, they are exceptions. Hong Kong and the Netherlands are tiny places built up from smart and orderly societies. Mumbai and New Delhi each have as many people as the entirety of the Netherlands. And you can’t compare Hong Kong, a blip when it comes to population density at only 7 million, with an island like Java, which is only 650 miles long, averaging maybe 80 miles wides but with 135 million people. Java’s population density is more than 5 times that of New York state and is the most heavily populated large island in the world.

India or the Philippines have 11 of the 12 most densely populated cities in the world, and they have 16 more of the next 39.

And the fact people live like animals is just that, a fact, not a claim.

I’ve seen people living in box cars in Guatemala City, favelas in Rio de Janeiro where the aroma of feces is pungent and 24/7, as well as families sleeping on the streets of that city at night so thick I had to step over them to walk down the sidewalk. In Jakarta and Belize City I’ve seen canals that are open, bubbling sewers with an unbelievable stench, and people living right over them. Mumbai is one massive sh-thole and every time you wipe your nose in New Delhi you’ll see black from the pollution. Fabulous Kathmandu is an ugly urban dystopia with lines of cars waiting for gas longer than a football field. Varanasi is another, almost unbelievably filthy, urban nightmare where I visited a man with a wife and 4 kids who lived in a room about 9 by 6 ft – typical. As I speak there is a severe shortage of Type 80 octane used by older cars and taxis in Cairo. As you can imagine in a place like Cairo, with 20 million people by the way, there are a lot of old cars. I could list a lot more but I’ve made my point.

You should read the book and concentrate on the stats and do not rely solely upon anecdotal information. Population density is a sub-problem. However, when you take into account the birthrates globally you see something quite different. The US will never get to a billion people – it won’t even get to 400 million. And how can it? Europe and South America, as well as North America, Russia, China, and Japan and Korea will soon be losing people. Yes, the population is growing; but the median age of the globe is rapidly going up. People are living longer. By 2050 over 340 million people in China will be over 60. The ratio of males to females in China is now 123 to 100. Even in Muslim nations the birthrates are plunging (See Egypt, Indonesia, Algeria, Iran, Turkey, et als).

Even in India there’s a large subdemographic that is failing to reproduce in sufficient numbers.

Not my worry,i had lots of them.Fortunately I’ve a paranoid person who distrusts government in all matters. The choice is government or Family. Now government is an evil being,large, blind,fat,self important and self-serving in the best of times, and a nation is truly fortunate to be hampered by only a small one.Isn’t it amusing when sports commentators bite their tongue after blurting out that that running back is one of thirteen children,it’s funny,you know it is.I don’t mean a government style family,i mean the normal type!
Good luck with your one over educated child as you all proceed into the future.I’ll have none of it!

want to stop our explosion of out of wedlock births? simply quit rewarding freeloaders with $$$ for having kids they can’t pay for.

fix immigration (long overdue)? seal the border (yes, it can be done), give nonviolent illegals a chance to register w/ real proof of past residency, to become citizens, and allow for a sensible guest worker program.

want to stop our spiraling divorce rate? stop nofault divorce and award custody to the best parent, regardless of gender, with generic c.s. awards not based on gender. joint custody w/ equal responsibilitie$ and right$ should be the ideal, not some rare option.

want to stop welfare fraud? we already had this under control until the little giveaway stuff for votes guy came along.

fix health care? some minor adjustments to insurance laws, like allowing companies to cross state line and such, could have solved this problem long ago w/o socializing 1/6 of our economy.

all of our problems are fixable, but not w/o cutting the socialist $$ cord to uncle sugar’s teats. we have really been over paying for legislators who produce nothing of any value, much like any room full of lawyers. i guess if the only tool in your tool chest is a lawyer boondoggle, then everybody looks like a potential victim, or chump.

Great article and interview. One thing to point out though that Mr. Last perhaps is unaware of – Palestinian fertility is indeed declining quite a bit. See the recent column that David Goldman (aka Spengler) just wrote on this website where he discusses this topic.

“According to an article in Guardian (2008) using PCBS census figures, the Palestinian territories have one of the fastest growing populations in the world, with numbers surging 30% in the past decade (2008). There was 3.76 million Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, up from 2.89 million 10 years earlier.” – Wikipedia

A word to the young…and a little off topic but I believe worth the mention.

———-

To each their own. But if you ask me, Mr. Last makes the same mistake he accuses others of – bad measurement, at the very least incomplete measurement to come to his conclusions about happiness.

I wonder if Mr. Last will look back at some of the foolishness of these statements made in this article and realize how ignorant and superficially intelligent he was as a younger man? Sentimentality is no weakness – it’s a strength. It’s basically what makes us human.

Who you ought to talk to if you’re looking for direction to what really makes people happy is not statistics of young parents or potential parents of child bearing years, but palliative care givers. And you’ll get a very different set of responses about happiness or what brought happiness from people who have lived it – all of it.

Talk to people whose kids are grown. The most common response I get from parents is that they regret not having more children after finally getting older and wiser, figuring out what really brings you “happiness.” This isn’t limited just to mothers but fathers too.

Was raising children, especially toddlers, a pain in the ass? You betcha; it was consuming. Is having two incredibly accomplished now grown kids worth in retrospect?

Absolutely you betcha. I have two grown, beautiful daughters that are worth more to me than all the money in the world, all the happiness money could buy. And I know I speak for their momma.

Yeah, I find those happiness measurements a bit useless. Compare them, perhaps, to those same 2 people in 30 years and I would guess the numbers would be at least inverted in not a larger gap to those who had children. I’m in the trenches right now with my 4 (10, 7, 5, and 2), but my Mother-in-law often comments, “It’s so nice having adult children.” And MY Mother often says, “You have to survive parenthood to get to be a grandparent.”

So I’m enjoying my kids as best I can (though I may be tired and overwhelmed right now) and looking forward to the days when we can be friends and enjoy one another as adults.

Tex, I’m with you on this one. I had 6 children. I wish I had more! My youngest is 15, and they all grew up too fast. The best advice I got as a parent was to enjoy them because they grow up too fast. I wish I had followed that advice more.

It is a myth that it is expensive to raise children. My husband and I together haven’t cumulatively made a million dollars over our entire marriage, yet we have managed to raise 6 children.

Well, I agree that we’re headed in a very bad direction, with far far far too much immigration — both legal and illegal.

Part of the reason college is so expensive is supply and demand, together with hyper-credentialism on the part of lazy employers and HR clones. If a year of private, self-driven study is good, they think 2 years at a college must be so much better, and 4 years or 8 or 10 must be better, still. Then they leap from that to, “no one must be able to use these here computer thingies, and idiot-phones, and tablets unless they have at least a master’s degree and 2-3 years of calculus and diffeq. And then the next one has to brag, “Why we don’t even consider the ones who don’t have a PhD.”, and then the next adds, “and at least 2 years of post-doc”, and then “2 post-docs. No one could possibly develop an app without having completed at least a couple post-docs.”… and so it regresses.

“Where has the global fertility decline come from?”

People choose to reduce fertility when they feel over-crowded, and when prices of things (like land) which respond to population numbers and crowding increase, when they see no net advantage from having one more child over not having one more child (i.e. the marginal subjective value of another child).

OK, Ehrlich wasn’t totally correct, and a bit of a crank. He exaggerated. But even Julian Simon has admitted that he was not totally wrong.

I can’t help but reflect that my grand-father, who was not a wealthy man, owned some 500 acres, houses, barns, corn-cribs, tractors, combine, work-horses… when he died, with no debt. Between land use regulations and over-population, I couldn’t even afford, when my line of work and my own STEM career was booming, to seriously consider buying a single acre and home. Few seriously consider saving up enough to actually buy a home and land outright rather than merely enough to take out what ends up being a life-long mortgage. What with infill mandates, the vast majority who can even afford a ticky-tacky free-standing home are stuck with a lot of a tenth of an acre or less (especially when you consider that you’ll still be saddled with thousands of dollars in taxes each year and monopoly-priced utilities).

Florida’s Democrat governor took some heat a couple decades back when he chipped in with some friends to buy a couple hundred acres and restore one rustic cabin and build a couple more like those typical in the area back in the 1830s (also for his scary “assault rifle” “good for only one thing”, killing varmints, and, as he pointed out, wild turkey). Anyway, the regulators and eco-fascists threw a fit over him “sub-dividing agricultural land”, “leap-frog development” blah blah blah.

When you look at the quality and workmanship of things like furniture, clothing, tools… Ordinary, lower-middle-class (as the leftists would call them, because everyone must be pigeon-holed into a rigid class system) Americans used to own solid oak furniture, some with thick marble tops, not mere veneers. In my father’s time the closest we had was granite window sills, too thin to hold up, and pine. I don’t see the average working man affording such, today. What we have, today, is shoddily glued together saw-dust and plastic that collapses when the humidity rises a bit, and the upholstery falls apart (nauga doesn’t hold a candle to well-tanned leather or even rugged textiles made 60-120 years ago; OK so they didn’t have perma-press, and laundering was more laborious). And, speaking of which, there’s no way most families can afford to rely on only the man to be the participant in economic activities reaching outside the family. We certainly can’t let the boys hunt or trap on their ways to and from school to bring in a little something extra for the soup because people are crammed too close together, and the government school thugs and brain-washers would be calling out the SWAT teams with heavy armor.

The way I figure it, all this push by the pols to import more cheap, young, pliant labor has 3 possible bases:
(1) they want to “save” the Socialist Insecurity Abomination, ObummerDoesn’tCare, Medicare and Medicaid (except that the Europeans have already proven that this tactic doesn’t work, and such evil leftist scams should not be saved, anyway);
(2) they, personally, or those close to them, have a way lined up to profit from the cheap labor;
(3) they prefer to be over-crowded, themselves and get psychotically lonely when they are not constantly barraged by the touch, sight, smell and sound of other people at all hours.

If you want to have 3-4 children and can support them, that’s fine; just don’t let them slop over into other people’s space. Raise them up in your own condo, and sub-divide it for them, and recycle all of your own air and water and food, and see how far that gets you. And don’t let me see you over-using the “commons” for your own personal benefit without paying your “carbon tax” and such.

“the Palestinian territories have one of the fastest growing populations in the world”

Exactly. They have — Arafat had — an intentional policy of over-populating. And as the over-population drives more poverty, they whine and say, “You other people should be ashamed of yourselves that we over-bred and are over-crowded and poor. It’s all your fault!” And, they also actively encourage migration/invasion/infiltration into what they consider to be enemy territory. That Europeans let them, thinking they were going to be there only temporarily, was a huge mistake.

Correct immigration (long over due) by
(1) sealing the borders;
(2) giving non-violent illegal aliens a chance to leave of their own accord;
(3) actively seeking out violent or thieving or con-artist illegal aliens, imprison, fine, collect restitution, and eject them;
(4) reduce “legal” immigration and visitor visas and guest-work visas and exchange visas to levels that can actually be managed (and by “managed” I mean being able to know within less than an hour where any one of them is and whether they have been initiating force or fraud, and being able to escort them out if necessary within a day when the visa expires — 100K to 300K total in the USA at any one time, not 5M-30M); and (5) conduct proper background investigations on every visa applicant to try to determine whether they are likely to initiate force or fraud (not only whether they have done so in the past, but whether they might be infiltrators/invaders/sleeper operatives). We already have multiple paths to citizenship, FCOL.

Hong Kong and The Netherlands and India and Red China and Japan and Union City NJ and much of France and California and Chicago and Manhattan and Boston and Atlanta and DC are all over-populated and over-crowded. If you like being over-crowded, you’re welcome to go live in such places and try to generate there some respect for individual rights, including property rights, RKBA/self-defense, freedom of speech and other communication media (political and religious, which seem to be eroding here), freedom of religion, the right to travel by individually owned and private means (i.e. private vehicles big enough to carry your family and all of your stuff, another right being intentionally attacked by the collectivists), reasonably low government extortion (below 10% of earnings).

Hughes’s First Law of Population Dynamics: If you want to get somewhere, people will be in your way.
1st Corollary: The more urgently you want to get somewhere, the more numerous and slower will be the people in your way.

Mark my words; the preponderance of European-Americans will leave this continent for another perhaps Australia, perhaps back to the land of their fathers. A risky experiment is underway by our Progressive leaders.

If there were a fresh and free frontier to flee to you’d already see European Americans, especially conservatives, fleeing there in record numbers. The freedom loving of our nation would go off somewhere to found a new free nation leaving behind the statist residue to much more rapidly slide into fascism they so desperately wish to live in. The problem is that there is no new frontier to flee to. Europe? Please, they’re much further down the road to tyranny than we are and their demographics suggest a Muslim majority in the coming decades. They’re basically a giant blue state infested with the same PC self-loathing authoritarians we’d be trying to flee from. Canada and Australia have largely the same problem, not quite as bad as Europe, and at least they won’t be living under Sharia, but they’re still infected with the same disease. Socialized healthcare and no gun rights? No thanks. Russia and the former Soviet bloc countries present a bit of an opportunity, they’re short on a lot of freedoms but at least they have low taxes, and they still have some pride in their culture and identity unlike the rest of Europe. They’ve already had their little experiment with communism so maybe they’ll continue to get better over the decades, who knows, but it’s by no means a sure thing. Other than that where else would you go? South America’s undergoing a wave of socialism, Africa will always be a hopeless sh*t hole, Asia is crowded and authoritarian, where would you go? Personally I think the best bet is someplace in America with a low population density and harsh enough climate to keep the nanny state types away. Places like Texas are conservative now, but eventually they’ll be infested and overrun with refugees from blue wastelands like California who carry the plague of their noxious ideology with them. Go somewhere far from the Mexican border where an urbanite liberal simply won’t make it. Someplace like Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, or Alaska. Someplace with like-minded people who just may help each-other hunker down and resist or ride out whatever comes.

Do you really want to know why the liberals are so gleeful right now? Why around the world they’re so happy that America is finally succumbing to this sickness? It’s because they know that this time there is no place for their intended victims (us) to flee to. They know that this is the last refuge of individualism and once we’re under their yoke the peculiar brand of American liberty will no longer be a challenge to their ideology anywhere. Many of them really do hate us and get joy from seeing us suffer. They do not just want to live in their utopia, they want to force us to live in it too. That’s the big payoff for them. They will cackle with glee knowing that somewhere a middle class white male is waiting in line behind a minority welfare recipient for government rationed healthcare. It’s the whole basis of their ideology, punishing the “bitter clingers” will somehow make up for historical grievances. It’s like an article of faith. My only solid recommendation is to surround yourself with like minded people who will actively or passively resist their schemes and create an environment hostile enough to leftist ideas that they stay out. Learn whatever skills you can to become as self sufficient as possible and live as healthily as possible, distributing goods and services like healthcare is and will be their primary means of coercion. Don’t think there’s some more free land you can flee to though, because this is it my friend.

TPM, Texas has always had a significant percentage non-Caucasian population and lots of in-migration. I’m worried about majority-Latino school districts, but Texas has been able to assimilate people of diverse origins into a culture that values individual liberty. I credit the wisdom of Texans who wrote a constitution that keeps government local and on a short leash. By keeping the taxing and spending local, people who want less government can simply move a little further from the city and city people have limited ability to spend other people’s money.

I believe that small business owners, independent of ethnicity, are a reservoir of strength for conservatives. The Vietnamese woman who cuts my hair, the Black man who trims my trees, and Mexican man who replaced the roof on my house know more about individual liberty and personal responsibility than Caucasian intellectuals who only talk about conservatism. They may not know who Friedrich Hayek is, but they understand economics. We’ll be OK so long as the “can do” spirit gets passed down to children of all races.

Sorry, Montana, Wyoming et al. are also being over-run. While New Yorkers were discussing the ground zero mosque, people in Montana were arguing about whether a Catholic monastery for up to 35 monks, on thousands of acres, with the closest neighboring drive 7 miles away, might generate excessive traffic on high holidays which might draw as many as 150 of the faithful. It’s another example of too many people crammed closely enough together to be inherently annoying, even at those densities (much lower than those of, say, Ohio or Kentucky).

Now, they’re talking about recovering the population of black-footed ferrets in the region. Each ferret requires a hunting range of about 67 acres, and lots of yummy prairie dogs. Only, back in the 1920s or so, some brilliant person carried some black plague infected rodents (and a few of their fleas) from California out there to try to kill the prairie dogs, which would infect the ferrets… and become a problem for humans. So, they’re talking about having to vaccinate the ferrets, first. And they still haven’t developed an effective vaccination for the bison, which carry brucellosis to/via the elk and the wolves and the cattle. Of course, if those critters were not so over-crowded, the diseases would die (would have died) out rather than spreading.

The monastery was in Wyoming, not Montana, and the issue was a couple of landowners who would have complained about the set-up if were 100 years ago. Regardless, the whole dustup ended in favor of the Monastery:

“Tuesday, October 5, 2010 at 1:00 p.m., at an open public hearing before the Park County Board of Commissioners, the monks were given unanimous approval to proceed with the building of Mt. Carmel for America. The commissioners wanted to know whether the land will continue to be used for ranching. The monks were happy to report that it will. They intend to keep the property as a ranch as well as work the land for farming. Father Daniel Mary explained … the Lord had already brought ranchers to the community who would help with 1,000 head of cattle that will graze on Mt. Carmel.”

I’m not a pro-natalist at all. However, I recently bought and read this book. It is quite good and is, by far, the best of the “birth-dearth” books. Even though I don’t agree with everything the author says in it, I still highly recommend it.

The solution to the “Demographic Crisis” will be applied by the millions of senior citizens who never retire. With zero-percent return on investment, collapsing pensions, and unstable markets, the Post Boomer generation will not be able to afford to retire. So they will keep on working and earning until the day they shuffle off this mortal coil, so they won’t need to depend on the younger generation to support them. Anybody below the age of fifty who is not planning on working well into his 70s is not being realistic about the future.

Nice interviews and book premise, except Mr. Last understated the research on parenting and happiness. Yes, some studies show that parents are less “happy” in their 20′s and 30′s, but parents are more happy in the 40′s and older than childless adults. In fact, the more children they have, the happier they are in later life. Adults without children show decreasing happiness as they age.

As the bumper sticker says, “If I had know how much fun grandchildren are, I would have had them first.”

You know, when I first had the first three kids, I wasn’t very happy, but by the time we figured out how to raise them and we got some in-house drivers, things got a lot better. I’m definitely much happier after eight kids than I would have been with only three, and I know I’m much happier than I would have been with no kids. The dollar amounts they give for raising kids, sending them to college are way off. Hand-me-downs, bulk foods, bunkbeds, fourth-kid-free policies at Catholic schools, AP classes and in-town colleges bring the costs down quite a bit per child.

It’s also interesting to me, what’s happening in my mom’s family: six offspring lived to marry and have children. Among the three conservatives: 14 children, 34 grandchildren (17 nonwhite under the current “one drop” rules), 7 great-grandchildren (all nonwhite). The three liberals produced: 10 children, 8 grandchildren, no greats so far. All white, FWIW.